


All Will Be Well

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [52]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Botany, Communication, Cute, F/F, Fantasy, Fluff, Happy Ending, Lesbian Character, Married Couple, Married Life, Massage, Medieval, Medieval Medicine, No Lesbians Die, Non-Sexual, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Secrets, Stress Relief, Useless Lesbians, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: “I just—to be out that late at night, Valériane.” Marlesse put her helm aside and set her head in her hands for a moment, gauntlets digging into skin. “In the city, alone. As one of the queen’s people. And unarmed. That’s like leaping into a fire.”***As it turns out, talking to your wife is rather difficult sometimes.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [52]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 5





	All Will Be Well

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops, I'm gay.
> 
>  **SUGGESTED REREADING:** ["It Will Always Lead To This."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328175) This takes place sometime after.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

In the time of Second Starfall, in the land of Althussant, there lived a royal botanist and a royal guard. They were happily married, and—

Ah, but you know them by now, don’t you? We speak of these women all the time.

***

One spring at Quellheart Keep, convulsions suddenly struck the herald’s little boy. The three-year-old had collapsed in the courtyard while playing with his cousins. By the end of the week, his body had weakened with the intensity and frequency of the storms that overcame him. Or so said the gossip that reached the botanist’s ears.

Valériane de la Rue knew the solution immediately. He would need something much stronger than what she typically stocked. More than chamomile and her namesake root. Substances created abroad, odorless and bitter. Valériane was determined to get those to him, or to his parents—somehow. She would not, could not, fail them. Why else (she figured) claim the title of royal botanist?

 _The soapmaker,_ she thought as the weekend approached. He was a man with connections far beyond Althussant. Valériane needed to visit him that night. But that night was also—

Well, her wife must have found her brooding at her desk as she entered the Blood Tower, because Marlesse de la Mer immediately scooped Valériane into her arms. 

“Ah, my love,” Valériane said under a barrage of kisses. “My annoyance at all things is profound right now. Tunic off and onto the bed with you.”

***

Alas—or perhaps thankfully, depending on your taste—this is not a tale of bodily passions.

Let us explain:

Every week, Valériane prepared a thick, sweet-smelling salve made of peppermint in her Blood Tower. Every week, Marlesse visited the tower and lie face down on her wife’s cot, groaning. And every week, Valériane worked the salve into her wife’s abused shoulders and back.

Marlesse—as the couple often joked—had the figure of a particularly gorgeous ox. Broadness and defined muscles all around. And while Valériane admired all of her contours, she grew concerned about them as the months drifted on.

Knots had appeared under Marlesse’s skin. Hard knots, tense with heat and pain. Each one spoke of a new stressor: the young recruit’s loss of a finger, the failed debates with Her Majesty’s Exchequer, etc. Marlesse’s duties never simply went away, so neither did the aches. They multiplied, in fact, lining her innermost flesh like the string of jade beads that Valériane always wore.

 _Worrisome,_ Valériane thought after every massage. She tried to simply enjoy their time off together, but failed.

***

Thus our botanist, on the week of the sickly herald’s boy, had fallen under a two-headed torrent of anxiety. Her fingers jittered; a sour sensation dripped into her heart. But at first she kneaded Marlesse’s back in silence.

Then she asked only, “Are you well, love?”

Valériane had gotten very good at actually _speaking_ to her wife—more or less. She never lied, and tried to say what she could. Like a weathervane in the wind, though, Valériane still always turned away from discussing her innermost emotions. They were delicate. More so than she would ever admit, dear reader.

“Hm,” Marlesse said. “Well…”

One of the elder guards (Marlesse explained) had taken a blade’s hit to the thigh, near the life-vein. A Jacques Something-or-Other. The surgeon said Jacques would live, but the trauma over approaching his own death would likely keep him bedridden for some time.

And so: a new knot, right in the middle of Marlesse’s back. Valériane pressed on it with her thumb.

“These things always happen under my watch,” Marlesse mumbled.

Valériane said, “You are perfectly innocent.”

“I suppose...”

“The queen would let you do whatever you wanted, you know.”

A silence fell upon them. If the botanist strained, she imagined she could hear the clockwork gears snapping away in her wife’s head. 

“I know you’ll always fret about your little warriors, Mar,” Valériane added, “but I imagine you’d find more peace away from...well—all of it.”

Marlesse chuckled. “What, a new job? You’re joking, little devil. Ah—you’re not joking.”

“No.”

When Valériane finished her ministrations, Marlesse rolled over and held her close against her body. The cot creaked under the shift. For a moment, they both breathed in the piercing scent of mint, as if to wake themselves. 

“Your back is like a bed of hot coals. And all of them have names,” Valériane said, finally.

“It’s part and parcel of the job, unfortunately. I’ll be alright, don’t you worry.” Marlesse’s massive shoulders glistened with the salve, and she looked around the tower in which Valériane worked and slept. Her gaze fell on the desk, the neat stacks of old books, the drawers where Valériane kept her herbal samples. “I hate taking up more space in your head than I must.”

“We _are_ married. Look at me, you grizzly bear. Only I’m allowed to sheepishly avoid eye contact.”

“I know,” Marlesse replied. She pressed her forehead to the botanist’s and fiddled with Valériane’s jade necklace. “I know. But I won’t desert my post...I can’t even imagine. The suggestion is—duty is the highest form of love. You understand. I know you do.”

“What I understand is apoplexy and heart attacks,” Valériane said, although she meant: _What I understand is loneliness and terror and the word ‘widow.’_

“I heard about the herald’s boy.” Marlesse touched her nose to Valériane’s cheek. “I only want you to focus on that. Alright?”

The botanist’s mind turned again and again, much as a broken windmill might. Outside, meanwhile, cicadas wailed, rising to a pitch that rang in Valériane’s bones. It was all too much. The soapmaker, the wild firey thing coiling up under Marlesse’s skin—

“Ugh. I have a headache,” Valériane said. “I’d like to kiss you now.”

Their lips met, and the necklace pressed between them.

***

The traditional Althussian wedding vow begins: _You are as my own body, my own blood. Before you, I put no one else._

Valériane mouthed it to herself as she curled atop Marlesse’s broad chest like a cat. She waited in the dark, and then, when Marlesse’s body began to tremor with light snores, she sat up. 

For a moment the botanist watched her wife. Nightmares plagued Marlesse, dear reader, and anxieties as unrelenting and unpredictable as the sea. Not to mention the constant sound of clockwork that haunted her: _tick, tick, tick…_

Typical ailments for a woman who was once a soldier, we are sad to say. Most nights, Valériane’s weight and warmth allowed Marlesse to relax long enough to drift off. A soft part of Valériane did not want to leave. But she had work to do. 

After all, there was the herald’s boy, and the soapmaker...

Her absence wouldn’t last longer than a few hours, or so she told herself. Certainly she’d come back before sunrise, or so she told herself.

Valériane thought: _If Mar wakes up, I won’t go. If she doesn’t, this will be the last time I go._ She kissed the guard’s forehead. Marlesse did not so much as furrow her brow. And that, as they say, was that.

The botanist donned her tunic, boots, and heavy cloak. She left the jade necklace tucked under a stack of books on the floor—Marlesse had given those beads to her, and she did not want to risk losing them or having them stolen. Then she carefully opened one of her bigger drawers on the other side of the tower. 

Inside, a series of magical _drasil_ lights illuminated and nourished three dozen tiny bulbous flowers. Each of the plants peered up at her eyelessly with their pistils. 

“I’ll feed you all when I return.” Valériane swung her head towards the tower’s one open window. “Hop to it, children.” 

The walking flowers leapt out of the drawer and trekked over to the window, swishing away against the floor with their roots. They looked for all the world like a line of loyal purple soldiers as they cast themselves out into the open air. Glancing down out of the Blood Tower, Valériane saw they had twined their stems together with those of the kudzu that grew against the stone, forming a rope.

For no particular reason, the botanist mumbled, “Love. True love.”

It was midnight, and this side of Quellheart Keep, for just a few minutes, lacked a protective presence. That meant no one to report to the queen—or to the chief guard, Valériane’s wife. The last thing she wanted was Marlesse to worry herself ill. _By Auradou, no,_ she thought. _No._

Out of the window Valériane went, holding her breath. The walking flowers gripped her wrists and arms and gently, slowly, slid her fifty feet down the tower’s wall as if by pulley. When she felt dirt under her feet, she dashed off into the night, smelling keenly like peppermint and guilt.

***

Our crafty Valériane had a rouncey horse put aside at a local inn for occasions like these—an inn where no one asked questions—and she rode it into the city. Auradou still thrummed with the music of a hundred minstrels; the rose-room lights twinkled wantonly, and men and women lined the streets selling cooked water chestnuts.

For her purposes, the night’s hullabaloo was quite lucky. She did not want to be noticed.

When Valériane came to the soapmaker’s shop, she tied her horse, approached the door, and knocked thrice.

“The best of all possible worlds is this one only...I suppose,” she whispered.

The door creaked open. A rush of lye-scent pummeled Valériane for a brief second.

“How is our favorite Kaaminan? How is your wife?” replied the soapmaker. Even without candlelight, Valériane could discern his wavering outline at the front counter. He constantly shifted his weight back and forth like a child anxiously awaiting discipline. 

“She does not know I come here. For her sake.”

“It is not so good, I hear, to lie to one’s partners.”

This was the very same soapmaker that Valériane had met long ago as an adolescent—the man who had let her rest in his shop as visions of the past overwhelmed her. They had, reader, something of a relationship. But we would not call it a friendship. 

“I'm in need of—I'm not even sure what you would call it in Althussian. It’s in none of our books. Obviously,” the botanist said. “And I’ll ignore what you just said.”

Behind the soapmaker, a banner depicting a rather battered lioness fluttered against the wall in time with his shuffling. “My dear, I could do without another lecture on those, what, little fairy beings that make a body ill.”

“If I'm truly dear to you, you would have your people tell the queen’s surgeons how to wash their hands and why. But—besides the point. An anticonvulsant, sir. It comes from Kaamin and it looks like a tiny white capsule. It—”

The soapmaker disappeared under his counter, leaving the botanist among the shadows. Then he placed a capped orange cylinder in front of her. Valériane tilted it towards the moonlight. The label had upon it handwritten Kaaminan. Pills within clattered like coins.

Dear reader: you did not ask where the Splendid found their supplies. Especially supplies from your birth land on the other end of the continent. And especially when those supplies spoke of medical knowledge far beyond—leagues beyond, entire universes beyond—that of your current country.

Valériane said, “I can expect these about once per month, yes?”

“You cannot save everyone, Lady de la Rue.”

“Oh, this again. I imagine you’d rather the queen left me dying on the side of the road ten years ago.”

“Perhaps—”

“I will need more of these, sir.”

“—but we are not so cruel. And you have been a fine servant—from the lips of the boss to your ears, my lady. What’s gone on at Quellheart?”

“ _I will need more of these, sir._ Each month.”

“If you continue to push, I will report this to the boss. It is abnormal for someone of your station to ask so fervently. To say the least.”

Across the city, the herald’s boy shook with another convulsion. Valériane almost felt it in her own flesh, and did not need magic to know he suffered right that moment. He was too young to be so ill. Too young to have had his own health fail.

 _Fail, fail, fail_ —the word echoed within the botanist, and then more of the Althussian wedding vow. _I take you as the protector of my fate, as I protect yours. As we protect ours._

How badly she wanted to grab the soapmaker’s throat now, to scream and destroy him with all she had. But she knew, immediately, the ridiculousness of her own thought. 

“We can't come to an agreement on this, then. Not a single compromise. You would truly have me renege on my duties.” Valériane held out her arms, exasperated. Within her something brittle had snapped clean in half like a bone. “So much for the Splendid’s best world, eh?”

“You're more worldly than most, Lady de la Rue, but you know this country excels where no others excel. You understand it. We know you do.”

Tucking the medication into her cloak, Valériane scowled. Every Althussian seemed to know a little about the Splendid, but never enough to glimpse at the entire landscape, so to speak. Even she had not the faintest idea of their aims. They seemed to hoard—simply _hoard._ Books and letters and crates of exotic fruit. And medication, from time to time. That was all Valériane could figure. 

_We do not ask about them, Valériane,_ Queen Alexandrine had said. _They have their duties and the kingdom still stands._

“If you’re an assassin’s guild like everyone claims, feel free to send one my way,” Valériane growled as she turned away back the door. “I’d welcome it.”

“We are not so cruel. You know Her Majesty would be so sad,” the soapmaker said.

***

Valériane trotted back to Quellheart Keep, swearing under her breath. Above the din of Auradou’s nightlife, she did not hear the gentle padding of a wolf’s paws behind her.

***

At the base of the Blood Tower, the walking flowers awaited her return.

“Nothing in this life is worth it,” she said to them. 

In response, they swung their purple pistils around as if to glance at each other awkwardly.

These little flowers the botanist had bred down from a more monstrous one that had taken residence in the tower before Valériane’s tenure. Valériane had chased off the creature—or rather, convinced it to leave. You remember that tale, yes?

Her pets had a more predictable, dog-like demeanor. Something close to kind and simple, actually. She was quite proud of that. Yet they still fed on the truth. And her statement was not the truth.

 _TRUE LOVE?_ one peeped at her in a small, but firm, voice.

Valériane sighed. All of her anger seemed to leak from her, and only a mild, tired annoyance remained. “You’re right. What about: I intend never to do this again. What about: I'm afraid, _afraid,_ yes, I said it, that I'll lose my wife and sleep in a bed of dust for the rest of my life. How’s that? Have I sufficiently embarrassed myself in front of you?”

Like grain in the wind the flowers wiggled and waved. They twined their roots and stems again around the kudzu.

“Your progenitor wasn’t half so demanding,” Valériane said.

***

Only a few hours had passed. Marlesse still slept, her arm cast over her eyes. As quietly as possible, Valériane helped her flowers back into their pots, hid the Splendid’s medication within the drawer between them, and shut it. She turned.

 _No more of this,_ she thought. 

Marlesse did not stir.

 _And yet,_ Valériane’s thoughts continued. She removed her clothes and slipped her beads back on around her bare collarbone. They hung between her breasts. _And yet, and yet, and yet._

A headache cracked through her skull with the same viciousness as the one she had earlier that night. She imagined the herald’s boy again, and all the herald’s boys of the world. She imagined how Quellheart Keep’s people would suffer without her.

She took a single droplet of valerian root tincture—her usual sedative—and nestled in with her beloved.

***

In the morning, Valériane packed the orange bottle tight in a satchel and had one of the queen’s messengers take it down to the herald and his wife. She was useless at house calls, so to speak. But she included fail-proof instructions to stretch the medicine out for at least three months. It was better, she figured, than nothing.

Then she had a pleasant Sunday and Sunday night with Marlesse—big meals and stargazing and walks in the royal gardens. 

On Monday, Marlesse returned to her duties, and Valériane to hers. Talk had it that the herald’s boy had gone an entire day without convulsions. All seemed well.

***

All would be well, dear reader—

—even though Marlesse came to the Blood Tower on Tuesday, at mid-day, with a grim certainty weighing down her features. When Valériane opened the door to her very armored wife, she realized at once what had occurred.

Marlesse strode past her and sat on the floor, her plate casing clanking as she lowered herself. Her helm remained motionless in her lap.

“One of the queen’s eyes, I imagine,” Valériane said. One by one she threaded the jade beads around her neck through her fingers, as the men and women who lived in the local shrines often did. “I thought I'd sussed them all out, and could avoid them, but—”

“You're free to go where you please, of course,” Marlesse replied quietly. Fear laced her voice—fear and defeat. She never wanted an argument, never a conflict, only to understand. Valériane adored that about her. “And it was Simone who saw you.”

 _Simone?_ thought the botanist. _The kennelmistress’s girl…?_

“I just—to be out that late at night, Valériane.” Marlesse put her helm aside and set her head in her hands for a moment, gauntlets digging into skin. “In the city, alone. As one of the queen’s people. And unarmed. That’s like leaping into a fire.”

“I leapt into no fires, my love. I promise you.”

When the chief looked up, her cheeks were wet. The scar under her eye looked shiny and raw.

“I dream,” Marlesse said, “about things like this, little flower. That’s why I’m here. I don't mean to guilt you. But I dream. All the time, when I can sleep, that is. Being a widow. Assassins, thieves. People who want to hurt the queen as easily as possible. And you, simply—simply—”

She stared at her palms. Every so often she squared her shoulders, wincing. 

Valériane imagined the horrid soapmaker and let out a barely-audible hiss. But—watching her wife in pain—she brought herself down from the scream building in her heart.

 _Peppermint salve, and willow bark tea today too, for good measure,_ Valériane mused. Heat rose into her cheeks. She turned to the kettle on her hearth and said, “Widow. Yes. There’s the word. I think about it all the time, too, don’t you know?”

“About?” 

When the tea had finished, Valériane handed her wife a portion in a porcelain cup the queen had gifted her. Then on the nearest piece of parchment she jotted down:

_I THINK ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME—YOUR DEAD BODY. I WORRY EVERY DAY. I REFUSE TO HAVE YOU HERE ANXIOUS WHILE I DO WHAT I MUST. I REFUSE TO CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR STRESS AND THE PAIN IN YOUR BACK. ALSO I AM BAD AT TALKING. I HAVE MANY FLAWS IN MY CHARACTER AND AM KIND-OF LOUSY. SORRY. I LOVE YOU._

The botanist held up the paper so Marlesse could read it. After a long silence, and despite everything, Marlesse chuckled—a wonderful sound to Valériane, who thought she might melt upon hearing it. 

“Alright. Alright—where did you go?” Marlesse said, sniffling.

“Duties, love. The herald’s boy, and...I shouldn’t have hidden anything from you. It's the only time I have ever hidden anything from you. Do you believe me?”

Marlesse sounded very weak as she replied, “I do. If I take another day off—every week—would you tell me what you did?”

The botanist took a seat next to her. They sipped their tea. It was difficult to remain angry or sad sharing a warm drink with someone you adored so thoroughly you could weep.

“Look at us, compromising,” Valériane said. “Will you let me work on your shoulders again while I tell you?—this tea is for pain, by the way.”

“How’d you know?”

“Ah, Mar. I know everything about you. One of the perks of being married. And, well, I suppose you’re going to know everything about me.”

When they finished, they remained on the floor for a moment, their heads tilted together, rubbing the botanist’s beads against the soft webbing of their fingers.

“Let me tell you first,” said Valériane, “about a secret I gave to a flower long ago.”

***

The Althussian wedding vow ends, _Suffering flees in our wake because we stand beside each other. All will be well._ And those in attendance are meant to echo, _All will be well, all will be well._

**Author's Note:**

> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** The longer Mar/Val fic I'd been promising! A look into their married life and into some of Val's...secrets. We'll see more of the Splendid, certainly.
> 
> I mentioned a few weeks/stories ago that my motivation has tripled since my girlfriend's moved in...and it has, but my body is now not cooperating due to new medication. Always something going on with my physical meatshell! Sigh! I'll try my best to get a weekly story out, or at least two to three per month. Crazy that I was able to do one per day earlier in the year.


End file.
